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Effect on pseudoconditioning of drugs with known central nervous activity

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Abstract

Rats were placed in a conventional shuttle-box and submitted to buzzers and shocks presented in random sequence and with no temporal association. These rats made pseudoconditioned barrier-crossing responses to the buzzer. The performance of these responses was enhanced by metrazol and trimethadione, depressed by amobarbital, phenobarbital, meprobamate, diazepam, chlorpromazine and reserpine, and unaffected by diphenylhidantoin, cannabidiol, caffeine, strychnine, picrotoxin and dibenamine. The enhancing effect of trimethadione, but not that of metrazol, was antagonized by dibenamine. With the exception of metrazol, chlorpromazine and reserpine, the drug effects on pseudoconditioning reported here do not correlate with those reported for pre-trial administration on conditioned avoidance, using the same doses and route of administration (intraperitoneal). The present results support the notion that pseudoconditioning is a distinct behavioral entity with pharmacologic characteristics clearly different from those of avoidance conditioning.

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Izquierdo, I. Effect on pseudoconditioning of drugs with known central nervous activity. Psychopharmacologia 38, 259–266 (1974). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00421378

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00421378

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